Q: We were looking at our flowers the other evening and saw an amazing insect with huge pincers on its rear end. What is it, does it do any damage and how do we get rid of it, if it does?
A: An insect pest many people seem to have this summer is the earwig. They are 1-inch-long insects with pincers on the back end. They can pinch, but not too hard, and they don’t bite or sting. They lay eggs in soil in the fall that hatch in the spring and grow into adults in late spring or early summer.
They eat many things: dead leaves and mulch, dead insects, live insects, live plants, flowers and fruit. They leave ragged holes in leaves and flowers and will climb trees and corn to eat the fruit. Indoors, they eat crumbs of food.
During the day they hide in damp, dark cracks and under anything they can. They also will hide inside flowers with lots of petals such as roses. It is awful to reach over to a rose flower to smell it and have a dozen or more earwigs come running out. They feed at night, so to be sure they are the culprits behind any holes in flowers or on leaves, check the plant at night with a flashlight.
Outdoors, use an insecticide that mentions earwigs on the label. Indoors, use an insecticide that is for indoor use on cockroaches. And of course, follow label directions.
Q: The needles on the top half of our spruce are turning brown. We can’t see any problems or any disruption to the roots. Should I fertilize now?
A: Probably not. There are a few reasons that the top of a tree turns brown and dies. Lightning is one possibility. We always think of lightning blowing things up when it hits, but that is not always the case. Sometimes the bolt breaks into pieces that hit several things at the same time. A finger of the lightning could have hit the tree and another finger could have hit an electric pole or the top of a house. The top of the tree could be killed while the rest of the tree is not visibly harmed; the electricity may have spread down the outside of the tree in the water running down the tree.
Another more common problem causing the death of the top of spruce trees is spider mites. These pests are very small (only about the size of a period at the end of this sentence). The damage they do can be extensive because they reproduce quickly and abundantly. To see if you have them, check to see if the dead and dying needles are clinging to the tree with webbing, kind of like spiderwebs. Shake a branch or two onto a white or black sheet of paper and look for tiny moving dots (with a magnifying glass if necessary).
Spider mites attack many kinds of plants, indoor and out. They tend to be more common when conditions are dry. They are so small that rain can keep their population in check on outdoor plants, and a trip to the shower stall can clean most of them off of houseplants.
If the tree is small enough, you can wash it with a hose, being careful not to be so vigorous as to damage the tree. Some dead and weak needles will probably wash off. Systemic miticides will do a good job, and contact miticide sprays will also work. Since they are not insects (rather, they are classified with ticks and spiders), some insecticides will not have any effect on them, so read the label before applying anything.
